The month that was, while Drishtikone was in Transition
We have been off air on Drishtikone for the new transition to complete.
In this time, a lot has happened – in India and the world.
India:
IPL Betting controversy:
Led by the Indian Pacer Sreesanth, players and bookies have been caught cheating on teams and throwing matches to get pay offs from betting in the IPL games. Not just the players and outsiders like Vindu Dara Singh, who was connecting many dots, but even the owner of a team – Raj Kundra of Rajasthan Royals has admitted to betting on his own team… and having lost tons of money. The plight of the likes of Sreesanth and Vindu Dara Singh is bad enough, but it is the situation with Raj Kundra that is the most hilarious! If the owner of the team doesn’t know what his team is upto or capable of, then forget betting – that itself should be enough grounds to take that hapless team back from him! And, how the heck did he become a millionaire – he doesn’t know what to invest in .. in the first place! He has poured huge sums of money into RR to buy the franchise and is now betting against it (other way around as well, I would hope!). What the heck is he? A masochist schizophrenic who devises newer ways to torture himself??
By elections and BJP Old Guard on its way out:
After the recent by-elections, it came out clearly that BJP isn’t a lost force. BJP made a clean sweep of two Lok Sabha and six assembly seats in Gujarat, while Nitish Kumar’s JD (U) lost its seat to Laloo Prasad’s RJD in Bihar. Many are saying this is due to Nitish Kumar’s estrangement with BJP and his opposition to Modi. This makes him less likely to leave the NDA if Modi is posited as the PM candidate. In fact, that is precisely what BJP is trying to do now. And, in his last years, LK Advani has become the biggest villain in the entire BJP / RSS combine for not leaving aside his own ambitions, which he should just relinquish and move on. He is a spent force, and it is better to go on good terms than being thrown out the way he is being! In fact, as the National Executive Conference is underway for BJP in Goa, Advani is sulking outside of it and not seen there.
Pakistan:
Two stories from Pakistan made headlines –
Election results and Nawaz Sharif as the new PM:
Sharif returned after a bitterly fought elections in Pakistan. The completion of the process and installing of the new Government after a full term of the previous Government is a FIRST in the history of Pakistan! As much as the Pak Army and ISI controls the threads from behind the curtains, at least an elected Government is on the view for the second consecutive term. Meanwhile ex-President Musharraf was kicked out of the race through procedural and legal moves.
In this elections, Imran Khan was supposed to be the dark horse, who didn’t really kick much. However he did come in as #2. It was the Nawaz Sharif and his party which really came out on top. This week on June 5th, Sharif was sworn in. He has talked about several things since then – including friendship with India and call to US to end the Drone Strikes!
Electricity Shortage:
In 2000, there was a huge hue and cry in Pakistan, because the media and its virulent analysts didn’t want their Government to sell its surplus electricity to India. They argued, that since they are in a position of advantage, they shouldn’t be giving that away to India so easily! In fact, some of them even went as far as saying that with power shortage becoming a regular thing, India’s industrial and IT rise will also suffer, which may end up routing that work to Pakistan, so why lose that opportunity. In 2011, it was the exact opposite. India wanted to sell surplus electricity to Pakistan because of acute shortage there. Now, the situation has reached epidemic proportions as most of its large cities are facing blackouts for 22 hours in a day every day! The less said about the small towns and villages the better. The situation is such that most businesses aren’t able to survive or even compete in many cases.
Rest of the World:
The one incident which shook many people’s consciousness was the beheading of a British Soldier by two Muslims on a busy intersection using a cleaver and boasting their act.
In London last week, two Muslim men shouting jihad’s ancient war-cry, “Allahu Akbar” beheaded a British soldier with a cleaver—in a busy intersection and in broad daylight. They boasted of their crime in front of passersby and asked to be videotaped.
It is sad how Muslims in Europe are following a sick and uncivic agenda to destabilize the Governance, the polity and the civilization of those countries. Some fear that UK may become majority Muslim in the coming decades and that can spell doom for its citizens if the spread of Islam and its virulence is not checked. Tarik Fatah pulls up the Muslims and the Brits and their authorities in this piece of his on the beheading case.
While ordinary Britons and non-Muslims around the world are bewildered by these never-ending acts of terrorism, the response of the leaders of the Islamic community is the tired old cliche — Islam is a religion of peace, and jihad is simply an “inner struggle.”
The fact these terrorists are motivated by one powerful belief — the doctrine of armed jihad against the “kuffar” (non-Muslims) — is disingenuously denied by Islamic clerics and leaders.
Yesterday, instead of calling on Muslims to shelve the doctrine of armed jihad, predictably, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) issued a quick press release claiming the “barbaric” attack has “no basis in Islam.”
Not true, MCB. As a Muslim, I can say without fear, the latest terror attack has a basis in Islam and it’s time for us Muslims to dig our heads out of the sand.
It is time that Europeans wake up to the threat to their civilization posed by the Islamic ideology being promoted in their countries.
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In the coming days, we will discuss more of these topics in detail as the impact of these things goes wider than individual events.
